Heat-Related Failures on Southeast England’s Railway Network: Insights and Implications for Heat Risk Management

Abstract

High temperatures and heat waves can cause numerous problems for railway infrastructure, such as track buckling, sagging of overhead lines, and the failure of electrical equipment. Without adaptation, these problems are set to increase in a future warmer climate. This study used industry fault data to examine the temporal and spatial distribution of heat-related incidents in southeast England and produce a unique evidence base of the impact of temperature on the rail network. In particular, the analysis explored the concept of failure harvesting, whereby the infrastructure system becomes increasingly resilient to temperature over the course of the summer season (April-September) as the most vulnerable assets fail with each incremental rise in temperature. The analysis supports the hypothesis and clearly shows that a greater number of heatrelated incidents occur in the early/midsummer season before reducing significantly, despite equivalently high temperatures. This failure harvesting and the consequential increased resilience of the railway infrastructure system over the course of the summer season could permit an innovative and dynamic new approach to heat risk management on the railway network. New approaches that would reduce the disruption and delays and improve service are explored here.

The hottest July day on the railway network: insights and thoughts for the future

“…For this study, weather‐related incidents were identified from the free‐text column in FMS using an adapted algorithm developed by Ferranti et al . (). The algorithm was used to search for weather‐related keywords and phrases recorded in the database, such as: buckle, temp, expansion, hot, thermal, weather, storm, high and light.…”

“…However, previous warm summers, such as those in 1995 and 2003, clearly show that heat severely impacts railway infrastructure (Thornes, ; Hunt et al ., ). Heat impacts upon railway assets in a variety of ways (Palin et al ., ; Ferranti et al ., ). For example, the heating of rail track in direct sunshine can lead to thermal expansion and consequential buckling of the rail.…”

“…Following this study, Network Rail introduced new policy requiring the use of auto‐tensioned fixings for overhead lines; this should significantly reduce the occurrence of line sag in future. Signalling assets can also malfunction on warmer days and, indeed, signalling failures account for 57% of the reported heat‐related incidents between 2006 and 2013 (Ferranti et al ., ). Telecommunications assets, particularly those within line‐side cabinets or location cases, are also sensitive to heat; the temperature within a location case can be much warmer than ambient temperature, and can also change much more rapidly (Rail Corp, ), leading to the equipment overheating.…”

An Integrated Wind Risk Warning Model for Urban Rail Transport in Shanghai, China

“…For example, heavy precipitation, flooding, and strong winds of Typhoon HaiKui (August 2012) significantly disrupted rail transport, with rail, subway, and Maglev systems being suspended [7]. Although some knowledge exists on how to protect transport infrastructure from extreme weather, climate events, and climate change, and to improve network performance [8][9][10][11][12], given the sensitivity of rail transport to extreme weather, more attention is warranted. (Table 1).…”

Semi‐idealized urban heat advection simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting mesoscale model

“…While the UHI can be beneficial, that is, reduced space heating requirements (Santamouris et al, 2001), the benefits are generally overshadowed by the negative effects of excess heat during summer. These include health risks, particularly during heatwaves (Stone et al, 2010;Heaviside et al, 2016); and infrastructure, for example, railway buckling Ferranti et al, 2016). The UHI may initiate thunderstorms (Bornstein and Lin, 2000;Dou et al, 2015) and increase precipitation (Shepard et al, 2002;Dixon and Mote, 2003).…”